Tonight, Canada stands on the brink of a historical moment. Because of the hamfisted tactics of the current prime minister, and his apparent disdain for the devastating effects of the current economy on the average Canadian, the other 3 elected parties are banding together to topple his government and replace it with a coalition of Liberal and NDP, with BQ support. This is a moment of history because, since Confederation, there has only been *One* coalition government in Canada.
I've read a lot of people misconstruing what this means, and how it is that the Opposition parties can do this, considering we've just had an election. Nor do these people seem to understand *why* the Opposition feels this is necessary. I'll get into the why in a bit, but for now, the how.
Any one of the last 3 elections could have resulted in a coalition government. In fact, in my opinion, they should have: it would have been far more representative of the result of the popular vote. In the last election, only 37% of Canadians voted in favour of the Conservative party. In other words, 63% of us voted *against* them. How then should they form a government and claim to have the mandate of the Canadian people when clearly and according to all the laws of mathematics, they do *not* have the support of a majority of Canadians? Because Canada is not a 2 party system, our votes are diluted: if a majority of Canadians think that some other party should govern, and vote accordingly, we end up with a government formed by the least dilute. Had their been another rightwing political party to choose, it's entirely conceivable that Stephen Harper would not be Prime Minister. Anyhow, lets rewind to election night. What happened on Oct 14 was this: The right leaning voters had one choice, they voted for the conservatives. The left leaning voters had *three* choices, the NDP, Liberals and Green parties. And Quebec did as usual, voted primarily for the BQ. The left vote was diluted amongst 3 (or 4) parties in every riding, so most ridings went to the side with the least dilution of the popular vote - *not* the party with the majority of support.
Since they did not hold a majority of seats, but they *did* hold more then any one of the other parties, the Conservatives chose to form the next government. It *could* have been totally different, because it is legal in Canada for 2 or more parties to enter into an agreement to work together to form the government. Had the leaders of the other parties consented, on election night, to form the government then right now, at this very moment, we'd have a government consisting of elected representatives who earned 63% of the popular vote, as opposed to the Conservative's 37%. We would have a government formed the way we voted.
Fast forward to yesterday. Yesterday the Finance Minister rolled out his fiscal update. In this update he does absolutely not one thing that attempts to alleviate the current economic crisis. Stephen Harper and his Ministers continue to ignore the crisis here, in Canada, while at the same time attending G7 and G20 summits detailing the finanacial crises facing the global market. They pay lip service at these events, then come home and *do nothing.* And just to top things off, in their arrogance, they decide to discontinue the per-vote subsidy that helps finance the opposition parties. Here's a bit of history: this subsidy was put in place in 2004 to replace funding that would normally have come from big business' political contributions. Contributions that were banned at the same time, because of the obvious conflict of interest they could cause. Removing this subsidy would effectly bankrupt the other parties. It was Stephen Harpers attempt to cripple any opposition to his goals. Thank god it failed.
Today it was announced that the Opposition parties will vote against the fiscal update, which Minister Flaherty insists is a confidence measure. Further, they announce that they are in talks to form a coalition to form a new government. Mr. Harper plays his last remaining card and postpones or cancels any votes until next week. And then Mr. Harper comes on TV to tell us all that the opposition has no right to form a government without an election.
This is a lie.
We've had an election. If the governor-general approves the coalition they *can* take over governing, they have already won the appropriate number of seats. We voted for them. Voting non-confidence against the sitting minority government removes that party from governing. It would be fiscally irresponsible to delay forming another government until we can waste more money on an election that we've already had. All this action would be doing is correcting the error that *is* the current government. It would be creating the government that a clear majority, 67% of canadian voters *chose* in the last election.
